


The Big Book of True Loves

by OptimisticBeth



Category: Original Work
Genre: Coming of Age, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Magic, Modern Era, Mythology References, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22336132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OptimisticBeth/pseuds/OptimisticBeth
Summary: Every magical creature gets reincarnated human only to bloom into their true self when they figure out what magical species they used to be.All of Harper’s friends have found themselves: a pixie, a dryad, a satyress, even a leprechaun, but Harper’s only defining trait is a bad attitude. She’s thought maybe mermaid or centaur or even banshee, but she hates both swimmingandhorses, and shereallycan’t sing.Then Harper finds out.Itcouldbe worse. She could be a cave troll. But what’s a girl to do when her true self is something dark? Something that isn’t powerful like a dragon or fashionable like a demon but awkward and uncomfortable and terrifying? Somethingno onelikes.Harper needs her friends more than ever to survive this change.If only she didn’t keep pissing them off.
Comments: 36
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've set aside a lot of my original work in favor of fanfiction, but I've found that sharing my work motivates me to finish it. So I'm adding a few in-progress stories I've let languish in my Unfinished pile.
> 
> I encourage readers to give feedback _if you feel like it_ including pointing out typos and constructive criticism. (Please do try to be kind if the work isn't your cup of tea. I don't mind, but I don't need it spelled out.)

Harper’s shirt had a wet patch on the shoulder from the blonde girl sobbing into it. “I’m never going to find my true love,” bawled Melody. “Never! I’ll end up old and shriveled and alone like that creeper on Tower Street.”

Harper patted her friend gently on the back, avoiding the delicate wings that shivered with each new bout of tears, and tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

She failed.

“Even if you don’t find The One—” she rolled her eyes as Melody let out a huge wail, “—you’ll still find love. You’re too damn determined to fail.”

Melody picked her face up off of Harper’s shoulder. Tight blonde curls fell to her shoulders, and wet hazel eyes peered up at the taller girl. Pixie wings fluttered hopefully, iridescent. “You really think so?”

This time, Harper made sure Melody saw the eye roll. “_Duh._”

“Do I need to kick someone’s ass?”

The boy was taller than Melody, his curls less curly, his hair more golden, and his eyes had more green in them, but everything else _ screamed _“sibling.” He raised a brow at Harper, and she gave him a shrug.

Melody sniffed and turned. “No, Felix, I’m okay.”

“_She _ broke up with _ him_,” Harper explained. It was worse when the boy broke it off. Melody usually went on a three day self-pity binge, at the end of which Harper marched to her house and pulled her out of her funk with a swift kick in the rear. Their other two friends, Nora and Daphne, usually handled the weeping and the ice cream and the murmurs of sympathy. Harper only did tough love, which was why it was unusual for Melody to seek _ her _out after a breakup, but Nora and Daphne were on a field trip.

Melody rallied surprisingly quickly, some of her usual chipper attitude leaking into the sadness. “I’m gonna go see if Sabrina is on break.”

“She is,” said Felix. “I just came from there.”

Melody’s face bloomed into a wide smile, and she skipped—literally _ skipped_—off.

Felix stretched out beside Harper. “Thank you. If you hadn’t handled that, I would have had to.” He shuddered.

“How do you live with her?” A small smile twitched at Harper’s lips as she watched Melody round a corner down the hall.

“I stay in my room. With the music turned up.”

Harper’s smile deepened as she glanced his way. “You’re such a good brother,” she deadpanned.

“The best,” he agreed with a wide grin.

“How’s Sabrina?”

“She’s good. Been studying for a chem exam.”

Harper nodded without comment. Sabrina was a mermaid. She could walk on two legs, but too much time out of the water would severely dehydrate her. She took most of her classes in the school’s pool with the other aquatic students.

Harper didn’t have to look at the boy beside her to know his gaze was locked on the gold necklace around her throat. “Stop that.”

He laughed. “Sorry.“

She smiled and shook her head. Leprechauns had a _ thing _for gold. Though not as short as their forebears, thanks to growing up human, the small races did stop growing the moment their powers activated. Melody would never be more than five feet tall, but Felix had had a growth spurt right before he'd found out what he was.

He spoke casually, with studied indifference. “Find out what you are yet?”

Harper’s smile faded. “No.” She wasn’t obsessed with finding out, but she definitely felt the pressure. _ Everyone _wanted to know what they were and expected everyone else to want it too. The day a student strode the halls with brand new goat horns or pixie wings or witch warts, the whole student body adored them. Just for one day, but it was a heady experience for most.

It sounded awful to Harper.

“Okay,” he murmured.

They sat like that, side-by-side, enjoying the silence. They didn’t look at each other, just existed peacefully, and eventually Felix pulled out a worn paperback and turned to a dog-eared page. He read until the bell sounded, ending their break period, and they parted with a casual, “Later.”

* * *

Harper knew _ exactly _ where she’d find Melody after school, because it was the place Melody _ always _went when she didn’t have a boyfriend.

The library.

Specifically, the twenty-student-deep line for _ The Big Book of True Loves_. When cross-referenced with _ The Almanac of Past Lives_, it would tell the reader exactly who they were destined to be with.

It was an obsession for some, but the science was imperfect. The reader had to know their species first—family and appearance varied widely over incarnations, but a person’s species _ never _ changed—and then dig through the thousands of entries for their particular species in the Almanac just to narrow down _ who _they might have once been, and then they had to take those names and search the Big Book for potential matches.

To Harper, it sounded like a big fat waste of time. There were too many variables, too many possibilities. Even just the pixies spanned multiple reference books.

Harper was waiting for a computer to free up when Daphne and Nora arrived, fresh-faced and happy after their trip to the forest. Daphne was a wood nymph and Nora was a satyress. Both drew strength from the forest and needed frequent trips into wooded areas. They lived in the same apartment building and their parents traded camping duties every other weekend.

Harper heard the clop of Nora’s hooves as her friends approached and didn’t need to turn to address them. “She’s at it again.”

Nora sighed, but she was looking at Harper instead of Melody. “So are you, apparently.”

Harper raised an irritated brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you hate having any semblance of fun. Or anyone else having fun.”

“Whatever,” said Harper.

Daphne, ever eager to broker peace, angled herself between them. “What have you been up to today?”

“Melody dumped her new boy toy.”

Daphne winced, the brown bark of her skin crinkling into the expression. “Is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” said Harper.

“Are you sure you didn’t make it worse?” asked Nora, angling her horns down as if she expected an argument.

Harper lifted her shoulders. She’d wondered the same thing—not that she’d admit it.

“I’ll go check,” said Daphne, gliding across the floor on forest-soft feet.

“Love the confidence, guys,” Harper muttered mildly. “Really making me feel loved, here.”

Nora propped herself against a bookshelf and crossed her arms. She was a few inches taller than Harper even without the curling horns, and Harper wasn’t short. “Come on, you know you’re shit at pep talks.”

“And you’re so much better at it?”

Nora snorted. “Than you? Infinitely.”

Harper rolled her eyes, but she didn’t take offense. It was true. Nora had that instinct that told her whether she was making things worse or not, a trait Harper had been born without. “Well,” Harper returned, “I am _ the best _at breaking bad news.”

“You are the only one _ willing _to break bad news,” Nora countered.

Harper shrugged. “Same thing.”

Nora clapped a hand on Harper’s shoulder. “And that’s why we keep you around.”


	2. Chapter 2

As the library crowd began to trickle to after school clubs, Harper finally noticed the boy. He had light red hair, pixie-clear skin, and opalescent wings, not unusual in the least... except for the way he watched Melody. His gaze gravitated toward her no matter which part of the room she flitted to, and when she ducked into the hallway, he followed.

Harper did, as well.

It took her a moment to find them. The bathrooms were across from the library, but a quick check in the ladies’ showed it was empty.

When she ducked back into the hall, the sound of voices drew her left, toward a branch of the corridor no one ever needed after school.

“—I swear, I knew it the moment I saw you. _ You’re the one_. You’re my soulmate. And when I heard you’d broken it off with Jesse, I knew I had to tell you before—”

“Please let go of me,” said Melody, an edge of panic lacing her voice, and Harper rounded the corner to see her friend cowering against the wall, the boy too close with his hand wrapped around Melody’s arm.

He released his grip, but his body still blocked Melody from escaping. “Just listen to me—”

Harper strode toward them, furious. She grabbed the boy by his shirt and _ flung _him away from her friend, a tactic she would have used if he were a giant but which worked particularly well with his petite pixie frame. “Get off of her, asshole!”

He put his hands up and cringed as if expecting her to hit him, but she just pulled Melody behind her and guided the smaller girl back to the library. Melody was shaking, fucking _ shaking_, her eyes wide as if she couldn’t quite believe that had just happened.

“You’re okay,” Harper murmured, handing her over to Daphne and Nora the moment she could. “Some jerk cornered her in the hallway,” Harper told them when Melody didn’t speak. “Red-haired little shit.” She glanced toward the door with narrowed eyes, half-suspecting he’d try to follow them.

“Thanks,” said Melody to Harper over her shoulder before Daphne guided her to the comfortable chairs and Nora shooed a freshman out so that Melody could sit down.

Harper offered her version of a comforting smile and a shrug. “What are friends for?”

* * *

“His name is Edwin,” Melody explained. “He goes to a different school, he shouldn’t even have _ been _ here. He’s friends with Jesse. We ran into him at a party last Saturday—Jesse introduced us. Edwin tried to talk to me, but I didn’t pay much attention because I was already thinking about ending it with Jesse and I was freaking out.”

Harper frowned stormily at the floor, arms crossed. The boy had followed Melody to her school, snuck in, found her, and waited for her to be vulnerable before he pounced.

Harper’s instincts insisted that he was a predator. His behavior set her mental alarms jangling, and she felt the need to rip into something.

“I’m going to make sure he’s gone,” she said, straightening abruptly and striding out of the room.

It felt good to pace the halls, to be moving. Harper checked down the way she’d last seen the little shit, but it was empty, so she went back and checked the other direction. It was on her third circuit that she almost literally ran into Felix—she stopped two inches away, glaring at him as if _ he’d _ almost run into _ her _and not the other way around.

A charming brow lifted as he took in her expression. “Who spat in _ your _cereal?”

“Some asshole tried to mess with your sister.”

His borderline-cheerful expression sobered. “Which sister?”

“Mel. She’s in the library.”

He nodded and turned his head to look that way. “Sabrina would have drowned him.”

“Yup,” Harper agreed. Everyone knew not to fuck with mermaids. They didn’t lure sailors to their deaths so much anymore, but only a fool discounted that portion of their history. “Red-haired little bastard. Keep an eye out? I need to talk to security—he’s not even a student here.”

Felix nodded, his eyes raking her face. “Okay.”

When she started to turn, he snagged her elbow. Gently. Just enough to make her pause. “_You _okay?”

She shrugged irritably. “Just pissed.”

“Harp,” he said, and she met his eyes.

“I want to hurt someone,” she admitted. “It doesn’t even have to be him. I just want to destroy something.” Her mouth twisted, unable to decide on a scowl or a snarl. Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “There’s something violent inside me.” She didn't let herself think too hard about it.

Felix's fingertips on her arm brought her back to herself. The touch allowed her to take a deep breath, and she did her best to push the agitation down.

He lowered his head with a grimace. “He put his hands on my sister. I want to kill him, too.”

She nodded jerkily, and they just looked at each other for a few seconds. She didn’t see fear or condemnation in his eyes, and it made tears prick behind her own. She ripped her gaze away so he wouldn’t see. “I should get to security.”

He nodded and let her go, but she felt his eyes on her until she left his sight.

* * *

The incident with Edwin kept Harper on edge even as her friends started to forget about it.

“You can't just brush off a creepy stalker,” Harper argued for what felt like the thousandth time.

Her friends rolled their eyes.

“We're not brushing it off,” said Nora, “we're just moving on. Like you should.”

“Besides,” added Melody, “it’s kind of romantic if you think about it.”

Harper felt like her head might explode. “_Stalking?!_”

Melody huffed, her blonde curls bouncing with the motion, and fluttered her wings impatiently. “He went through a lot of trouble _ just _to tell me he loves me. So, yes.” She lifted a petite shoulder with a dreamy smile. “It’s kind of romantic.”

Harper looked between Daphne and Nora and realized they weren’t going to be any help. They’d obviously heard this already, and, when it came right down to it, the two of them liked a good romance just as much as Melody. Harper’s frustration turned her voice into a growl. “He wasn’t confessing his love, Mel, and it’s not like he could be in love with you anyway because he doesn’t _ know _ you. You can’t love someone you don’t _ know_.”

Another careless shrug. “He probably heard a lot about me from Jesse.”

“Have you _ asked _Jesse about that? Or whether his crazy friend has a habit of forming stalkerish attachments to girls?”

Melody lost the dreamy expression to glower at Harper. “No, I have not asked Jesse anything. We broke up, remember? He took it really hard, and I don’t want to open those wounds back up.”

Harper pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Translation: you’re too much of a coward to face him.” She held out a hand. “Give me your phone. _ I’ll _call him.”

Melody squeaked and pulled her purse protectively behind her. Harper lunged, and Melody took off. What followed was a decidedly undignified game of chase in which Harper was hampered by her unwillingness to claw the phone away her friend even though Melody couldn’t outrun her.

They had to stop to get to class, and Harper sought out Felix the next chance she got.

“So you need me to swipe her phone tonight and get Jesse’s number?” he asked, leaning back against the wall with a paperback dangling from one hand, his thumb keeping his place.

“Please.”

“And then you’re going to call him and check up on this Edwin creep?”

“Yup.”

He nodded and pierced her with an unusually serious stare. “Okay, I’m in. But you have to do me a favor first.”

Harper sighed. _ Leprechauns. _“Fine. What is it?”


	3. Chapter 3

Everyone knew that Principal Lash protected the hoard of confiscated items under the floorboards of his office.

Everyone knew it, but still some idiot tried once a year to get their phone back.

This year, that idiot was Harper. Or, more specifically, Felix with Harper standing lookout.

Leprechauns didn’t have many friends, and Felix had fewer than most. Harper understood the need to be left alone, so she and Felix got along okay. They’d known each other for as long as she’d been friends with Melody, so… most of their lives. Harper had never been afraid of climbing too high or running too fast or snarking at the bigger kids, and Felix had never turned down an opportunity for mischief, all of which explained why he kept dragging her into his shenanigans and she kept letting him.

Harper crossed her arms and leaned against the countertop as the school secretary, Mrs. Glass, used her one large eye to search the box behind the counter for the earring Harper had “lost.”

“Is this it?” asked Mrs. Glass, coming up with a silver hoop.

“No,” Harper murmured, trying to make her shoulders slump convincingly as her foot tapped against the floor. What was _ taking _so long?

Mrs. Glass disappeared back into the lost and found box. “What did you say it looked like, dear?”

“Silver,” said Harper, spotting the shift of the principal’s door and slumping in relief as Felix slunk silently out and crouched at her feet with a huge grin and a wink. “With a little ballerina charm on it. And the ballerina’s dress is pink.” Felix caught her eye and made a face, and she shooed him away. The fake earring story needed to have details, and she _ did _used to have ballerina earrings. When she was seven. Melody had given them to her.

Felix had _ just _crept out into the hallway when Mrs. Glass rose back up. “I’m so sorry, sweetie, I can’t find it. Why don’t you sign the ledger here, and we’ll let you know if it turns up.”

Harper shrugged and picked up a pen, bending over the dusty blue book Mrs. Glass thumped in front of her. She put her name and a description of the item below rows and rows of entries by other students, thanked Mrs. Glass, and left.

Felix waited against the wall by the corner, flipping a large gold coin and catching it. “The luck of the Irish,” he said in a terrible imitation of an accent.

Harper only raised a brow. Leprechauns _ did _have more luck than most. “All that for a coin?”

He held it up between two fingers, letting the light play off of it. “Pure gold,” he said with obvious pleasure. “Saved up for ages to buy it.”

“And yet you lost it.”

He tilted his head, the green in his eyes twinkling at her. “Thus the rescue mission.”

He flipped it again, but his cocky expression fell when a leathery hand snatched it out of the air.

Principal Lash, who had just turned the corner, examined the coin and turned a speculative glower on the two of them. “My office. Now.”

Harper glared furiously at Felix, who winced. He’d just _ had _to show off his prize.

Mrs. Glass blinked at them as they followed Principal Lash into the back, and Harper kept her gaze carefully trained on her shoes, flushing.

Lash lifted two floorboards and poked around in his hoard, looking for something. Harper saw cell phones, rubber lizards, packs of chewing gum, MP3 players, firecrackers, cigarettes, a whoopie cushion, and at least three magazines with naked women on the cover.

Principal Lash rolled the coin over and over in his hand as he searched for the matching item in his hoard and did not find it.

Smoke billowed from his nostrils, the human skin of his face thinning so that ridges of scales peeked from beneath, and he turned eyes like burning brands on the two students.

Felix whimpered as the old dragon dropped the coin into the jumbled pile and nudged the planks into place with his foot. Harper elbowed Felix sharply in the ribs, making him jerk his gaze from the place where his coin lay.

She shook her head at him, and Felix seemed to curl in on himself in defeat.

So much for leprechaun luck.

Harper crossed her arms and glowered at the floor as Principal Lash sat behind his desk and pondered their fate. In the olden days, those found plundering a dragon’s hoard died an ignoble death, but things were more progressive now. He might _ want _to roast them alive, but they’d probably just get detention. Every day. Until they graduated.

Maybe longer. He looked pretty pissed.

Really, it was Felix’s fault. He should have known better—he used to think he was a dragon because of his hoarding instincts and had researched them for _ months _before someone had suggested leprechaun, and then his powers had bloomed.

The gold had been the tip-off. It was true that some dragons specialized their hoarding, but most usually had at least a _ theme_, and Felix just hoarded gold—not silver or diamonds or pearls, just… gold. The purer the gold, the more he wanted it, and he could sniff out metal impurity almost instantly. This trait made leprechauns great at jewelry-making, but you never saw gold in a leprechaun’s shop. Just silver and platinum and gemstones. They _ always _kept the gold for themselves.

They’d also been known to _ steal _gold, especially from each other, which was why leprechauns didn’t hang out together like pixies or mermaids or centaurs. Too paranoid.

Which was also a dragon trait, so nobody had been surprised when Felix thought he might one day breathe fire.

But for all leprechauns had damned good luck, Harper was starting to think this one was her own personal _ bad _luck charm.

“I can’t decide if this is worse than the time I almost drowned because you wanted to try cliff diving,” she muttered.

“You owed me for the mountain climbing,” he replied in an equally low voice.

Harper rolled her eyes. She and Nora and Daphne had joined Melody’s family for a camping trip the previous summer, and Harper had felt inexplicably drawn to the small mountain nearby with its crags and rocks and uneven surfaces. Nobody else had wanted to go, so Felix had shrugged and promised his parents he’d keep an eye on her. They’d climbed, and Harper had loved being up high with the sun beating down on her head and the wind picking at her hair. When they were a third of the way up, two hours into climbing, Harper had slipped on a narrow ridge and started to tip backward. If Felix hadn’t been there to grab her, she probably would have died.

They hadn’t told anyone. They’d turned around without speaking and climbed back down, both shaken by the near miss, and had kept it to themselves.

The rest of the trip, Harper had tried not to let her eyes drift to the mountain too often or with too much longing. She didn’t know why, but it had touched something inside of her that she didn’t understand.

Felix, when she’d mentioned this, had suggested that she was probably a mountain goblin. He’d ducked the pine cone she’d thrown at his head (mountain goblins were horrifying) and proceeded to badger her into cliff diving because no one else had the guts. The only thing that had swayed Harper was that he’d saved her life—and also that Sabrina would be in the water and able to help if they needed her.

Felix, with his double handfuls of luck, had sliced cleanly into the water, but Harper had hit her head on a rock. Sabrina had had to pluck her from the water, dazed but conscious, and deliver her to shore where the trio’s mother fussed over her with the manic energy of an anxious pixie.

Harper had spent the rest of the trip with a headache and a bad attitude, testing everyone’s patience until they’d left her alone with her grump.

* * *

“What on earth possessed you to help my harebrained brother break into Lash’s hoard?”

Harper shrugged and trailed her fingertips in the water before flicking them dry.

Sabrina, clinging to the pool edge, sighed. “Sometimes I think you do things just to be contrary.”

Harper considered, found that she didn’t disagree, and shrugged again.

Sabrina was a senior and played the big sister to all of Melody’s friends. She had bright green eyes and a matching tail which scintillated in the underwater lights. When her hair was dry, it was long and curly blonde. Underwater, it puffed prettily around her. Like most mermaids, she spent a lot of time finger-combing the tangles from it.

Harper sat on one of the pool’s platforms to talk to her. Everyone called it “the pool,” but the side-by-side saltwater and freshwater habitats were nothing like the chlorine-scented blue rectangle the rest of the school used.

The freshwater side, separated by a thick pane of aquarium-grade glass from the saltwater side, had leafy greens in attractive configurations and water lilies floating peacefully on the surface. Small, smooth stones lined the bottom, allowing nymphs, sprites, goblins, and naiads to walk without cutting their feet.

The saltwater side had kelp and seashells and a wall of real coral on a fake reef which kept students passing on the first floor from peeking in when class was in session. Sand covered the bottom.

The only thing missing, Sabrina had often complained, were fish. The school insisted that fish were pets and required too much upkeep, and the students had to accept their decision. In her tank at home, Sabrina kept seahorses and starfish and a blue tang named Lucky because it kept narrowly escaping the maw of Sabrina’s octopus, Wiggles. Harper thought that Wiggles was the mermaid version of a dog, but Sabrina said that it was the octopus version of an octopus because comparing marine animals to land animals was insulting.

“You’re definitely not aquatic,” Sabrina noted wryly. She had that look Felix got sometimes when he was trying to figure out Harper’s species. She rested her chin on her folded hands, her tail swishing idly behind her. “You could be a dragon,” she suggested. “Felix says you collect sparkly things.”

Harper rolled her eyes, fighting back irritation. She’d told him that in confidence. “It’s hardly a collection. My jewelry box is just a little full. And besides, who _ doesn’t _like sparkly things?” She looked pointedly at Sabrina. Mermaids were known for their attraction to things that shimmered.

“Point taken,” Sabrina demurred. “But you _ are _fierce.”

“Lots of things are fierce. Pixies can be fierce.”

Sabrina laughed. “You are _ not _a pixie.”

“I didn’t say I was a pixie. I’m just pointing out—”

“Okay, okay. Yeah.” Thoughtful silence, then, “You could be a valkyrie.”

“Valkyries like horses.” Harper did not. More, horses did not like Harper. The one time she’d attempted horseback riding, she’d been thrown off and spent the rest of the lesson sulking on the fence and giving her mount the evil eye. Sabrina hadn’t been there, but Felix and Melody had. Felix had laughed when the instructor apologized profusely and claimed that poor Butterscotch normally had the _ sweetest _temperament. He’d refunded Harper’s class fee, and her mom had sighed when Harper had told her the story later.

Sabrina grunted. “Sphinx? Giant? Banshee?”

Harper noted that Sabrina didn’t bring up the bloody, murderous options like lamia or wendigo. It was true that most races had a mean streak, but a few were particularly prone to viciousness even after so many incarnations separating them from the purest form of their species.

All she said was, “I hate riddles. I dunno about the others.” Giants used to be bad-tempered, but they’d mostly mellowed over the years. Banshees… harbingers of doom. Harper thought it sounded kind of cool. One of her favorite bands had _ two _banshees, and they shrieked into the mic with blood-curdling intensity. “Maybe banshee.”

Sabrina smiled. “How much detention do you have?”

Harper dropped her head backward. “Ugh. _ So _much detention.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re _ dating _him?!”

Melody stopped with a sigh when she realized Harper was no longer walking beside her.

“You’re _ dating _your stalker.”

“He’s not a stalker,” Melody replied pertly, textbooks in her arms. Her blonde curls were tinted dark blue by the lights from the pool. They were taking a curved passage that skirted the freshwater edge, a large wall of leafy greens inside keeping the classroom area private.

Harper stared _ hard _at her friend. “Are you kidding me?”

Melody rolled her eyes, sending Harper’s temper skyrocketing. “I knew you’d react like this,” she muttered. She looked irritable and impatient, as if she’d already had this conversation in her head and having to actually play it out was a massive inconvenience.

“Are you _ stupid?_” yelled Harper.

A centaur boy rounding the curve of the hallway stopped in his tracks, eyes wide, and began to back up.

Melody’s expression darkened, but Harper wasn’t done.

“He _ scared _ you, Mel, and now you’re, what, _ making out with him_?! Are you really this obsessed with true love that you’ll date any breathing body, even someone who might be _ dangerous_, on the off chance that he’ll turn out to be The One and carry you off to a happily-ever-after that, by the way, does not exist because happily-ever-afters are _ complete and total fiction_?!”

Melody snapped, “Just because your dad left your mom—”

Harper’s temper flared higher. “This isn’t about my parents! This is about you being a complete and total fuck-up when it comes to boys! What are you _ thinking _letting that creep anywhere near you?!”

“I was _ thinking _ that maybe people deserve a second chance!” Melody yelled back at her. “That maybe not everyone makes the best first impression, and that _ maybe _ I overreacted when he came to talk to me! But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? I mean, it’s not like you have boys beating down _ your _door.”

Harper resisted the urge to flinch. “This isn’t about me.”

Melody squared off against her. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it about you holding grudges and never letting anyone in? It’s not like you’re brave enough to do what I do, Harper. I put my heart out there constantly, and you’ve done that… how many times? Oh, yeah, never.” She gave a sharp, harsh laugh. “Just ask Felix.”

Harper shook her head, her heartbeat suddenly out of control. “What does _ Felix _have to do with this?”

“Just that I’m getting sick of watching you jerk my brother around.” Melody leaned in, and Harper resisted the urge to take a step back at the venom she saw in her friend’s gaze. “Have you ever thought, Harper, that the reason it’s taken you so long to find out what you are is because you’ve never let yourself consider the _ mean _ races? You want to believe you’re something light and sweet and wholesome like the rest of us.” Melody sneered. “The way you go after people you don’t like—anyone who saw it would know. You’re dark, _ Harp_.”

Harper recoiled. She stared at Melody long enough to see a flicker of uncertainty enter her friend’s gaze. Melody raised a hand, breaking whatever trance kept Harper motionless, and Harper fled.

She almost slammed into Felix, who’d been standing at a distance with several other students, but she managed to slip past without touching any of them. She heard him say, “What the _ fuck_, Mel?” but didn’t stick around to hear anything else.

Harper didn’t stop running until she got home. She felt like a trapped animal, willing to chew her own arm off to escape, but she felt safer the moment she got inside.

The first sob startled her. Harper never cried. She didn’t understand girls who spent all their time feeling sorry for themselves. If she were honest, she looked down on them.

Including Melody’s post-breakup drama fests.

They inconvenienced _ Harper_, who called her reaction tough love, but she’d never thought about how she made Melody feel. She’d never even been happy for her when she was in a relationship, tolerating it with no attempt to be supportive, not even willing to fake it.

Thinking about it made Harper feel like a terrible friend. Not just that, but a self-deluding terrible friend. She’d treated Melody like a child while telling herself she was doing the other girl a favor.

Not that she was wrong about Edwin. What was Melody _ thinking_?

But the argument had turned spiteful faster than a simple argument about a boy warranted. Melody had been saving up her anger, nurturing it so long that it had taken one little fight to make her explode.

_ You’re dark, _ she’d said. Harper replayed it in her head, wincing at the memory. She stumbled upstairs to her room, thankful to be alone with her suffering. Her mom wouldn’t be home until that evening. Even their neighbors on the other side of the duplex wall would be gone until school got out.

_ Dark. _ Harper’s mind carded through the races at whiplash speed. Goblin, golem, gorgon, troll. Ghoul, harpy, kraken. Bloodcap, ogre, ifrit. On and on, Harper listed monsters, terrified but forcing herself to face this likelihood. She’d been through all of the wholesome options, more than once, and Melody knew it. Harper had just refused to see it.

_ Dark. _

Her stomach twisted. She felt sick as she considered each possibility in painstaking detail, spurred on by self-loathing as hot tears seeped into her pillow.

She deserved this, deserved this pain. She’d screwed up her relationship with Melody so bad, she didn’t think it could ever be repaired.

And she hadn’t even known she was doing it.

_ Egotistical_, she thought to herself. _ Angry. Pushy. Dismissive. Selfish. _Why hadn’t she realized it earlier? How had she been so blind?

The pain jerked her insides into a knot, and Harper scrabbled for her trash can to empty the contents of her stomach into it. A second wrench of agony left her curled and panting on the floor beside it.

The next wave whited out her vision, and Harper screamed.

* * *

“Pain is a byproduct of the transformation,” the doctor explained as Harper sat in the emergency room with her mom’s hands clutching one of hers. A neighbor had heard Harper screaming and called an ambulance. “Centaurs have it particularly rough, and your pain levels are maybe not on par, but definitely high. I would say that whatever your true form turns out to be, your body will alter significantly.” He turned and typed into a rolling console. “I’ve put in an order for a pain reliever and a sedative to get you through the night.” He glanced at Harper’s mom. “You can pick that up in the pharmacy on the way out.”

“Do you know what I’m turning into?” Harper asked as he went to rise. She knew she sounded small and scared, but for once she didn’t care.

He put a comforting hand on her shoulder and gave her a small smile. “Yourself.”

When Harper got home, she checked her phone and saw that she’d missed a bunch of texts.

**[1:43PM Felix]** _Dragged Melody by your place to apologize, but you weren’t home._

**[1:43PM Felix]** _Let me know when you get in._

Then, half an hour after the first two:

**[2:05PM Felix]** _Are you okay?_

**[2:05PM Felix]** _Text me when you get in._

**[2:27PM Felix]** _Harper. Where are you?_

**[2:27PM Felix]** _Just let me know you’re alive._

The final slew of messages weren’t from Felix.

**[2:52PM Melody]** _Felix called your mom. You’re in the ER?! What happened? Are you okay?_

**[2:52PM Melody]** _Your mom said you were going to be okay. Did something happen?_

**[2:52PM Melody]** _Oh my god, Harp, I’m SO SORRY. Please don’t die._

**[2:52PM Melody]** _Please please please don’t die._

Harper considered returning the messages, but her pain pills hadn’t kicked in yet and she almost dropped her phone as fresh molten agony dripped down her spine.

“Go get ready for bed,” said her mom, stroking Harper’s hair with a worried expression. Her mom was a particularly gentle type of water spirit who looked like a perfectly ordinary human woman and worked as a bank teller. When water touched her, that part of her skin turned translucent and glowed, like a bioluminescent jellyfish. It was really pretty.

Harper dragged herself upstairs and changed into her PJs. Unable to do anything more, she collapsed onto her bed and curled up in a ball.

Her mom came up with a glass of water and urged her to drink it, running her fingers over Harper’s hair until the painkillers started to take the edge off the worst of it.

She barely remembered whispering, “Thank you,” to her mom before the sedative pulled her under.


End file.
